Gabber style

In the late 1980s, acid house had spread from the UK across the North Sea to the Netherlands. In the Dutch capital, house music was reserved for rich boys and show-offs. It was played in fashionable places and considered to be refined and elite. You had to wear expensive clothes to get into glamorous Amsterdam clubs. No sweatpants. “Gabber, you can’t come in here” is a quote by club bouncers known in Amsterdam circles.

Meanwhile, Rotterdam looked at all the rich party-goers with proletarian contempt and disgust. Rotterdam danced to hard Belgian records, where howling synthesisers were put together with an accelerated breakbeat, while the once calm house rhythm became heavier and evoked a military march. Soon local musicians began to produce their own records: first they imitated the Belgian ones (it took only half an hour to get to Antwerp by train), and later they found their own style.